On Thursday 28 April 2005 05:01, Xavier Beaudouin wrote:

> What is VHS ?
> It is a mass virtual hosting system that looks on a DB (mysql, psgsl,
> ...) or in
> an LDAP directory where is located the home directory of a host header
> named based
> webserver.
>
> It is 100% dynamic and allow handle a cluster and several webserver to
> be automagicaly
> configured without the need to update a conf file or even make special
> hashing system...

You will find this exceedingly easy in AOLserver. I have written several
myself. You could check out VAT: <http://zmbh.com/vat/>, which expanded on
tclvhr: <http://zmbh.com/tcllvhr/> or a very simple, file based system
described in: <http://zmbh.com/nsrewrite/doc/nsrewriteurl.html>.

The first two use the config file, so you would have to restart the server.
The last only requires the creation of the host directory, and the ability to
set DNS entries correctly for the new domain. In every case, you could easily
add database storage to allow 'no restart' configuration.

As a matter of fact, if you ever heard of MyDomain.com, this was a perfect
example of mass(ive) virtual hosting using AOLserver. The virtual hosting
software consisted of a single, very short page, which looked up the
configuration information. At one time they approached 500k domains in the
system, which pushed AOLserver onto the Netcraft map. There were no local
directories in the system, but it allowed users to redirect to their own
website, or to wrap their page in a frame (done automatically) to pull up
data stored anywhere on the internet. You could provide a home page, which
was stored in the database.

Bottom line: AOLserver is great for mass virtual hosting of the sort I have
described: static, database dynamic or offsite redirects. It is less helpful
for file based dynamic sites since you will likely have to rely on plain old
CGI. The built in Tcl scripting and adp (AOLserver Dynamic Pages) share
memory between requests and over the life of the server and system
user/group. So you would need to carefully control what your users are
allowed to run, otherwise they could mess with each other and with the server
operation. Using separate AOLserver virtual hosts will not work on a massive
scale since each virtual host requires a lot of memory, and requires time to
start up. It also requires a restart to add virtual hosts.

tom jackson


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